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Jul. 30th, 2006 10:56 am
Fascinating
NY Times: people are bigger, healthier, live longer than 150 years ago
I find the last page of this particularly interesting:
In one study, he examined health records of 8,760 people born in Helsinki from 1933 to 1944. Those whose birth weight was below about six and a half pounds and who were thin for the first two years of life, with a body mass index of 17 or less, had more heart disease as adults.
Another study, of 15,000 Swedish men and women born from 1915 to 1929, found the same thing. So did a study of babies born to women who were pregnant during the Dutch famine, known as the Hunger Winter, in World War II.
Being the size I am, and with my various chronic illnesses, I've occasionally had to hear people bitching about how I'm supposedly screwing the economy because of my health care costs.
Putting aside the fact that these people never seem to equally complain about athletes or people into dangerous recreation who suffer constant injury and therefore also raise health care costs, this argument is hogwash.
Yes, people may overall be bigger, now--even fatter--but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're less healthy. The assumption is that BMI alone determines health, and that's clearly wrong. Divorced from lifestyle factors such as nutrition and activity habits, smoking and drinking, weight alone doesn't tell the story of health.
Access to nutrition, medical care and vaccines in childhood clearly does.
If we really want to solve the cost of health care, spending scads of money berating people for having the occasional donut isn't the answer. Ensuring that every pregnancy is healthy, and every young child gets the health care and nutrition she needs is. An ounce of prevention begins in utero.
Obviously we all need to live healthy lifestyles. But a lot of our risks for disease have nothing to do with the choices we make as adults. They have to do with choices that were made for us before we were even born, with genes, relative health of pregnancy and childhood health care.
The people who like to flog the whole personal responsibility mantra refuse to believe that any problems could possibly be caused or exacerbated by our experiences as children. They have this bizarre idea that all kids start out with the same advantages and disadvantages, and so by the time we're able to work, everything that happens to us from there on out is simply a matter of our own will. Therefore, if we suffer, it's because we made bad choices.
But that's bullshit. We have scads of scientific evidence proving that kids who are born in poverty, with poor prenatal care, poor health care as infants, and lack of access to education and health care have serious problems as adults. This ranges from further poverty to addictions, crime and failing health.
The choices we make as adults influence what happens to us. But what influences the choices we make has everything to do with what happened to us from the moment we were concieved. And unless stingy people in government and business finally realize that investing in children solves a multitude of sins, we're going to keep having problems with crime and health.
I find the last page of this particularly interesting:
In one study, he examined health records of 8,760 people born in Helsinki from 1933 to 1944. Those whose birth weight was below about six and a half pounds and who were thin for the first two years of life, with a body mass index of 17 or less, had more heart disease as adults.
Another study, of 15,000 Swedish men and women born from 1915 to 1929, found the same thing. So did a study of babies born to women who were pregnant during the Dutch famine, known as the Hunger Winter, in World War II.
Being the size I am, and with my various chronic illnesses, I've occasionally had to hear people bitching about how I'm supposedly screwing the economy because of my health care costs.
Putting aside the fact that these people never seem to equally complain about athletes or people into dangerous recreation who suffer constant injury and therefore also raise health care costs, this argument is hogwash.
Yes, people may overall be bigger, now--even fatter--but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're less healthy. The assumption is that BMI alone determines health, and that's clearly wrong. Divorced from lifestyle factors such as nutrition and activity habits, smoking and drinking, weight alone doesn't tell the story of health.
Access to nutrition, medical care and vaccines in childhood clearly does.
If we really want to solve the cost of health care, spending scads of money berating people for having the occasional donut isn't the answer. Ensuring that every pregnancy is healthy, and every young child gets the health care and nutrition she needs is. An ounce of prevention begins in utero.
Obviously we all need to live healthy lifestyles. But a lot of our risks for disease have nothing to do with the choices we make as adults. They have to do with choices that were made for us before we were even born, with genes, relative health of pregnancy and childhood health care.
The people who like to flog the whole personal responsibility mantra refuse to believe that any problems could possibly be caused or exacerbated by our experiences as children. They have this bizarre idea that all kids start out with the same advantages and disadvantages, and so by the time we're able to work, everything that happens to us from there on out is simply a matter of our own will. Therefore, if we suffer, it's because we made bad choices.
But that's bullshit. We have scads of scientific evidence proving that kids who are born in poverty, with poor prenatal care, poor health care as infants, and lack of access to education and health care have serious problems as adults. This ranges from further poverty to addictions, crime and failing health.
The choices we make as adults influence what happens to us. But what influences the choices we make has everything to do with what happened to us from the moment we were concieved. And unless stingy people in government and business finally realize that investing in children solves a multitude of sins, we're going to keep having problems with crime and health.
